My goal in this was to choose a set of patterns that would require only about a shoebox worth of tools and materials to produce. A small enough collection that you can steal time at your desk at work, use the dining table at home or travel with what you need to produce a solid box full of flies. Something you could pack into your gear bag, hide in your desk drawer behind the liquor bottles or keep on the top shelf of a closet.
I want to enable opportunistic tying, where someone can crank out a fly in 5 minutes or so and go back to whatever they were doing without having to go to a big dedicated space. You should be able to have a great tying space on a TV Tray (if those things still exist). I tie on a standing table that’s about 18” x 30”. Not a whole lot of space, and I use that to my advantage.
First, I don’t have materials out for anything more than the pattern I’m currently tying up. When I change patterns I do mise-en-place and set out enough prepared materials for six flies at a time. Hooks have the right size beads on them. The right number and size of hen hackles are laid out. Only the color of chenille for the current six is on the desktop.
Second, because I only have space for a small amount of material on the desktop, the tools have less places to hide. I’d be in the emergency room if I tried to hold my scissors in my hand while I was tying so being able to grab the whip finisher or scissors easily speeds up my tying.
The most important feature of my tying space is that it’s on wheels. In the morning I roll it out, turn the lights on and I’m ready to tie a half dozen flies throughout the day. At the end of the day, it gets pushed back out of the way. If I want to tie while watching basketball, then it can roll into the room where the TV is.
But that’s just one way to do it. Robert Henri promoted the idea of being in “a state of mind that makes art inevitable”, I suggest that you make your tying space so that “a place that makes tying a fly inevitable or at least pretty damn frictionless”. Make it so you can lay out all your materials, make room for the few tools you need and make sure it can be wherever you are when you want to tie.